The Last Chance Library

June Jones has worked behind the same counter at Chalcot Library for eight years. She files returns, shelves books and mostly avoids conversation. She took the job after her mother, the town's longtime librarian, died, and she has built her whole quiet life around the same building.

When the county council votes to shut Chalcot Library to save money, June is pushed to the front of a fight she never asked to lead. The regulars rally around her: Stanley, retired and devoted to the crossword table, sharp-tongued Mrs. B, and Chantal, a teenager who treats the reading room as the one calm place in her week.

Her old school friend Alex Chen comes home to help. He is a lawyer now, with time and contacts to offer the campaign. His interest in June is obvious to everyone in Chalcot except June, who has kept people at a distance for so long that she cannot quite believe anyone would choose to stay close.

Saving the library means June has to ask for help, argue in public and let herself be seen. She has done none of that since her mother's funeral. Sampson's first novel is warm and often funny, about grief, community and a small town's fight for the place that raised half of it.